California faces uphill battle on car emissions -

California is unlikely to win its lawsuit against six of the world’s largest car manufacturers, which it filed earlier this week, say legal experts. The state is suing the automakers for the costs it says are associated with the vehicles’ greenhouse gas emissions.
Even with a small chance of success, environmental advocates say the new legal action is useful and necessary because of threats to the state’s existing plans to reduce car emissions.
The government of California has made many headlines by promoting laws to curb greenhouse gas emissions, even as the Bush administration rejects similar steps at national level. In August 2006 the state legislature passed a bill, which Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to sign, that will regulate such emissions produced by general industry.
The lawsuit filed this week by California's attorney general Bill Lockyer targets General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, and subsidiaries of Honda, Toyota and Nissan. Lokyer says the car manufacturers are responsible for 30% of state’s greenhouse gas emissions.
The complaint argues that the state has spent large amounts of money dealing with the impact of car emissions, including “planning, monitoring and infrastructure changes” to address problems such as increased ozone pollution, rising sea levels and an increased threat of wildfires.
Lockyer, who is up for election in early November for the position of state treasurer, has estimated the current damages at “tens of millions of dollars”.
Connecting evidence
However, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers – a Washington DC-based trade group that represents carmakers – denied that the companies are to blame. “Automakers are already building cleaner, more fuel-efficient vehicles, and every single auto sold in California is approved by the State of California before it goes to the dealer's lot,” the alliance said in a statement.
Legal experts point out that a similar case brought by California and other states against utilities companies in 2004 failed in the courts, and they expect that the current suit will meet a similar fate.
“I’m not sure that they have enough evidence to connect car manufacturers’ products with the effects of global warming,” says Jay Pendergrass of the Environmental Law Institute, also based in Washington DC.
Last straw?
Roda Verheyen of Climate Justice, an international group that coordinates environmental litigation, also says that Lockyer’s efforts may fail. But she believes that the current lawsuit has a slightly better chance of success than its predecessor because it outlines more specific damages, including coastal and beach erosion and threats to water supplies. “This case is really about local and current impacts,” Verheyen says.
Others say that the suit is useful because it adds to existing market pressure on automakers to make cars that guzzle less gas, which has hit all-time high prices.
“I don’t know what’s going to tip them to do the right thing but this could be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back,” says Jim Marston of Environmental Defense, a non-profit organisation headquartered in New York. “I hope that automakers realise this will be the first of a series of lawsuits.”
Setting standards
Pendergrass says that even if the suit fails it could serve as a template for similar suits in the future that include stronger evidence linking cars to climate change. He and others stress that the suit may also be a way for California to deal with threats to current plans for curbing car emissions.
In 2002 the state passed AB 1493, also known as the Pavley law, which goes into effect in 2009 and requires automakers to reduce emissions from their vehicles by 30%.
Car companies, however, have challenged this law in the US federal court system. In the pending counter-suit, launched in 2004, they argue that a state cannot set its own energy efficiency standards for autos.
As a result, climate campaigners say it is necessary for the state to pursue new avenues of legal action – such as the lawsuit announced this week – to pressure carmakers into making their products more energy efficient.
“It’s another way to tackle the problem,” agrees Danielle Fugere at the Blue Water Network, a division of Friends of the Earth based in San Francisco.